Sally in HR has a Business Problem
Steve reads his Blog
Sally's problem: the onboarding process for new hires at Acme Corp. Sally inherited the current process from her predecessor, consisting of a Master spreadsheet and a New Recruit spreadsheet. After a new applicant accepts an offer, she emails the New Recruit Spreadsheet to the new recruit. It is fairly straightforward on the surface, appearing to the recruit to be one page of questions. Bob, an Excel Guru who left the company three years ago, created it. There are quite a few hidden and locked cells, and no one is really sure what they are for, but it works. When the recruit returns...
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A Mountain of Shitty Little Apps
Steve reads his Blog
When Microsoft introduced the Power Platform as a "Citizen-Friendly" set of tools for non-technical business users to create apps to solve business challenges, it seemed a worthy endeavor. Well, enough time has passed to assess the outcome. Those who jumped in with both feet now have a mountain of shitty little apps. Those who watched from the sidelines decided, "We don't need that!" So is that the end of the tale? Let's see. The First Mistake To enable broad and rapid adoption of the Power Platform, Microsoft decided to add a "seeded" Power Apps capability to all Microsoft 365 licenses. Thus...
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Microsoft is Infected with AI as Copilots Consume all of the Oxygen
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Steve has a 4th chat with charles
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Steve has a Chat with Vahe Torossian
Steve reads his Blog
I had a chance to sneak up on , a Microsoft Corporate Vice President and the man in charge of Sales for Microsoft Business Applications. While Vahe has been with Microsoft for 30 years, many of you may not know him, so I wanted to fix that. Vahe is no ordinary Seller; he’s the “Top” guy who sets the sales strategy and motions for the entire global team. Vahe is also the guy who runs the really big enterprise customer meetings, and he’s super-friendly, as you would expect for the Chief Rainmaker. We covered a lot of ground in this one, so enjoy! Transcript Below: Vahe: Hey,...
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Steve has a Chat with Jukka
Steve reads his Blog
I had the pleasure of having a chat with a Power Platform industry leader, Jukka Niiranen. Listen or Watch below. Enjoy!
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The Works Services-as-a-Subscription Model Update
Steve reads his Blog
Back in May, I wrote a describing a completely new Services model we call "The Works from Forceworks". It is a Services-as-a-Subscription model that is unique in the industry. I also promised to follow up with our learnings from this new model, so today I will do just that. The Works First, I'll remind you of what the offer is. Thanks to advances in low-code/no-code for Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform we decided it was finally time to launch a completely new services model. An all-inclusive, unlimited service that included not just support, but also deployments and customizations, along...
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Power Platform Blind Spots
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Power Platform Outside the Bubble
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In my recent conversations with Charles Lamanna and Jason Gumpert , we discussed the explosive growth of the Power Platform. Then while listening to Jukka Niiranen on yet another podcast I was reminded that we are all inside the Power Platform bubble. From the outside, however, this bubble is tiny. Expanding Bubble There is no denying that the Power Platform's growth is impressive, but who is growing it? Microsoft has a fist-full of enterprise-sized customers who went all-in and sang the praises. But of all the enterprise-sized customers worldwide, I doubt this has touched even 1%....
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The Microsoft Partner Dilemma
Steve reads his Blog
info_outlineMicrosoft just announced, and released in the next breath, a new Pay as You Go model for Power Apps. This has huge implications for all organizations and also for users of our free RapidStartCRM solution. Let's unpack what it means.
Pay as you go
Who doesn't like the idea of only paying for what you use? I wish it applied to more things: "I only ate half of this hamburger, so I'll just you pay half the price", "I only drove my car three days last month, so I'll just pay 10% of my car payment". "I didn't need to see doctor last year, so I won't pay that health insurance bill." Sadly, most things don't work that way, but some do, like gas for your car, electricity in your home, and now... your critical business applications!
What does this mean?
This is a new option, in addition to the previous option of licenses. Before, when thinking about users for your applications, you may have pondered whether Sally would use the app often enough to justify paying for a license for her every month. Or those seasonal staffers, or volunteers who use your app sporadically. With this new model, you don't have to think about any of that anymore. You also don't have to worry about getting and assigning new licenses for newly onboarded staff. You just "Share" the app with them.
Cost impacts
Basically, in the background Microsoft is watching your app. When Bob signs in and uses it, "cha-ching", Bob is added to your monthly bill. If Bob did not use your app next month, he is not added to your bill for that month. Brilliant! So your monthly bill will go up and down based on how many users used your app in the month. For seasonal staff, maybe you see a cost spike in November, but the cost plummets back down in December for example.
How do you get it?
Well... it depends. Many organizations use Azure for various things and have an existing Azure subscription. Many do not. An Azure subscription is required as that is where the Pay as you go mechanics are located. If you do not have one, you can go here and create one with a credit card. Once you have an Azure Pay as you Go subscription established, you won't necessarily need to go back there, it is kind of a one-time step. It should take about 10 minutes.
Environments
The next thing you will need to do is decide which environments you want to utilize Pay as you Go for. Then connect those environments to the Azure Pay as you Go subscription. After that you can just share your apps with any users as you do today. But only pay when the apps are used by those users.
Questions
Yes this begs more questions than it answers, and some of those details are filtering out as I write this. But I have a feeling this will be a game-changer both for Microsoft and RapidStartCRM customers!